George Osborne says today on twitter that a statue of Gandhi will be placed “in front of mother of parliaments”:
Gandhi was father of democratic India. Can announce we'll honour his memory with statue in front of mother of parliaments in parliament sq
— George Osborne (@George_Osborne) July 8, 2014
As I pointed out the other day, the phrase “the mother of Parliaments” refers to England, not the British Parliament. You can’t place a statute “outside it” in Parliament Square.
For those who missed it, the phrase comes from John Bright, in a speech in 1865:
We may be proud that England is the ancient country of Parliaments. With scarcely any intervening period, Parliaments have met constantly for 600 years, and there was something of a Parliament before the Conquest. England is the mother of Parliaments.
John Bright was a son of Rochdale, about 25 miles from George Osborne’s Tatton constituency (just the other side of Manchester). Bright stood for free trade, electoral reform and religious freedom, and he opposed the Crimean War. I think George Osborne would have liked him.
Statue of John Bright, Albert Square, Manchester. Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeet.net).
Not pedantry, just a very creditable preference for accuracy.